Aava

Reduces malware attacks with help from Trend Micro

Overview

Aava Medical center is a Finnish family firm with a 50-year history. Its specialists represent the majority of clinical specialties. Aava provides specialist and occupational health care services in Espoo, Helsinki, Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Oulu, Tampere, Tuusula, Turku, and Vantaa. The company has approximately 450 employees, and in 2015 its total sales was approximately 45 million euros.

Security in Aava must be at the highest possible level. The patient information system has a lot of sensitive information that must never end up in the wrong hands. This is why Aava was proactive and upgraded its Microsoft® Office 365™ Security with Trend Micro™. In one month, Trend Micro™ Cloud App security, with its ability to detect known and unknown threats, cut the number of malware reaching workstations at Aava to a fraction of what it was before. For years, Trend Micro™ has protected the company’s servers and workstations with its antivirus solution, with good results.

Challenges

In a medical center like Aava, the heart of all operations is the patient information system. If it doesn’t work, business ceases immediately. This is why the security protecting this system must be up and running at all times.

“The amount of ransomware has grown globally so much that it has become a real threat, and the number is definitely not getting smaller. We had to react to this situation,” says Aava’s ICT Manager, Tero Lainpelto.

“Without proper protection, we could easily find ourselves in the tabloids, if there were any problems.”

The Office 365™ cloud service was relying on Microsoft® security solutions that were always a bit behind the real-time situation. And, it was difficult to get reports from the environment.

Why Trend Micro

Aava has used Trend Micro™ OfficeScan™ to protect its workstations for over 10 years, so they know the product works well. Malware descriptions are updated quickly and in the workstations. The software has a small footprint, so it doesn’t hoard the workstation’s resources or slow it down.

Trend Micro™ Deep Security™ has also proven its merit over a number of years. Aava sources its server capacity as a service from Cygate. In their data center, servers are protected with Deep Security. Cygate, specializing in designing and implementing secure IT environments, also provides Aava with Cloud App Security.

On the basis of a long and successful partnership, getting the added security for Office 365™ from Trend Micro™ was a natural step to take.

”IT management never has enough resources, so one of the deciding factors was how easy it was to use Cloud App Security.”

Solution

In March 2016, Aava started using Cloud App Security in its Office 365™ cloud service.

“Commissioning was extremely easy. Once we got the license keys, the product was in use the very same day. It just had to be told in a web portal where to find our office cloud,” praises Lainpelto.

Results

Cloud App Security has reduced the amount of malware reaching workstations even more, showing that a large portion of current threats are unknown, and that no malware identification information is available for traditional solutions.

“During the first month, one malware attack managed to reach a workstation, when previously the number was about 10 per month. The cloud service catches malware every day.”

When malware reaches a workstation, it takes at least two people to sort out the situation, so it’s much better to detect any threats at the outer border.

The new solution has also improved risk reporting. It has provided much better visibility into malware entering the network through email and files shared in the cloud, and administration has become simpler.

What's Next

To prevent ransomware from entering Aava’s environment, a new version of OfficeScan™ will be used to identify and prevent unauthorized encryption functions.

Next, Aava will grapple with the risk and troubles of vulnerable systems and applications. They plan to deploy Trend Micro™ Vulnerability Protection into their environment, with the goal of preventing any traffic to workstations that could exploit their vulnerabilities. Another item on the development list is the protection and easy management of mobile endpoints with Trend Micro™ Mobile Security.

“The promise of Vulnerability Protection to prevent zero-day attacks is particularly interesting. Developers of malware are, after all, always one step ahead of the fixes provided by application and operating system providers, and it wouldn’t be nice to be the target of the first attack.”